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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27997467">Putting the Class in Classpect</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/abraxasgrip/pseuds/abraxasgrip'>abraxasgrip</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Homestuck</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>"""classpect""", Meta Essay, Other</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 10:48:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>731</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27997467</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/abraxasgrip/pseuds/abraxasgrip</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A presentation of what could be considered a Marxist theory of classpect analysis.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Putting the Class in Classpect</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="narrative">I’ve complained enough about so-called “classpect” theory, a literalist degradation of art into nothing more than an overwrought container for a personality quiz. The treatment of a robust system of interlocking symbols as something to extrapolate and expand on, speculating on powers and placement in a grander scheme of passive or active roles. Rather than continuing to complain, to post tweet after tweet maligning this mode of engagement, I think it would be worthwhile to finally articulate a contrary approach to the concept of classpect. Or, for now at least, an approach that understands class as exactly that- class. A framework that examines how classes correspond to the fates &amp; positions of their historic counterparts. That unpacks their meaning, their bearing on characters and the story they exist in more broadly. This is not a conclusive guide, an exhaustive description, or a scientific schema. It’s a point made in three examples; a glimpse into a fundamentally different way to read one of the most elemental motifs of Homestuck. It’s nothing but a statement long overdue. 
</p><p class="narrative">First, though, it must be said that class means nothing in a vacuum, detached from time and place. Class society is dynamic, a network of social relations bound to material conditions that shift by the second. Without extensively articulating the world a system of rivaling classes inhabit, it is meaningless to discuss their significance. To paint that picture, and to work towards that end, if anything else, let this be understood as a presentation of a reading of sburb, discussed in glancing tweets insubstantially elaborated on before this moment. That reading is as follows: 
    </p><p class="narrative">The king is dead, his throat torn out. The queen has been trampled, gleaming guard armor rusts in a pit. Blood bearing the right to rule courses down marble steps and pools in streets and barren fields. It’s the end of an epoch, rock tearing hot chunks from the corpse of a god. A new world struggles to be born amidst the fire and fury of a dying order. Here the stage is set, in the twilight of gods. An infinite game between the dynasties and pawns of two rival moons. A conflict refusing easy mediation, anticipating the emergence of a rupture, an irreparable break which comes in the form of four children.
</p><p class="narrative">Four gods-to-be, searching for power and stability in the midst of chaotic collapse. These actors take the starring roles of a tale millennia in the making. They disrupt, they kill. Accumulating, exploiting. They distort all belief and ravage economic order. Their indiscretion crushes a peasant revolt, shatters a moon. They oppose and aid royalty in equal measure, surpassing feudal weakness and taking a rightful place as the clear heirs of a coming order. They wade into a sea of carnage, concerned only with ascension, personal development, acquiring and evolving. They hoard resources, grow numb to the loss of life required to advance their goals. And at the end of everything, the end of the death-on-death, they take the ruins of a crumpled reality and stow it away for later use. They are the bourgeois godhead- harbingers and executors of a feudal ragnarok. The progenitors of a world molded in their image. 
</p><p class="narrative">In the simplest of terms, sburb is this: the gore-soaked birth of the bourgeoisie. The game presents a pristine model of a crumbling feudal order and demands one singular thing of its players, above all else: “end this.” As an indulgent aside, let it be said that this framework has quite a lot of potential outside of this essay, which may be explored in the future in examining, for instance, Jane Crockers development and subsequent transition to power on Earth C, and more broadly how the bourgeois dictatorship presented to us by the epilogues demonstrates, from the position of the game, the most perfect possible world. But for the purpose of this essay alone: by understanding this compulsion, this singular purpose of the game as a bourgeois bootcamp prepping young gods for the immense task of carving a new order from the corpse of a failed order, we can begin to understand how classes function, as one of the most fundamental frameworks the game imposes on players. This is the lens through which, in this short essay, I will examine three classes: the prince, the knight, and the witch; in relation to their real-life positions within collapsing feudal orders.</p>
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